TechCredo has fine-combed the Market and the interwebs in an attempt to find the top free Android apps, and this is the result. All the applications have been tested and carefully selected, and the list is regularly updated with new software. Like many of the best things in life, these apps are free – Android definitely offers a lot of excellent software without having to spend a dime.

Since it’s easy to just search and browse the Market to get hold of great apps, a list like this might seem redundant. However, the Market’s abundance of titles can sometimes be a bit overwhelming and make it hard to know what to download – and even know what to look for in the first place. Hopefully this list will provide a good overview, especially for those new to Android: a place to start when you are about to fill up your device with the top free Android apps.

Please note that a few of these applications are currently only available in the US, and some of them require Android 1.6 or higher.

The QR Code links will bring up an image that you can scan with Barcode Scanner using your phone’s camera, and will take you directly to the Market.

Some of the applications have a Video link as well, and it will show a demo/review video for that title.

Apps surrounded by a box with a solid, blue border are the editor’s personal favorites.

Please feel free to share cool Android apps and other feedback in the comment section!

Layar Reality Browser. Augmented Reality (AR) is probably my favorite application category, and one of the (many) things that attracted me to Android in the first place. Most AR software show what is around you by displaying real-time information on top of what you see through the camera of your device. For example, if you simply hold your phone towards a monument that interests you, you can get information about that monument, depending on which layer you currently have selected. Layar Reality Browser is one of these AR apps, based on layers, and probably the most prominent of them all.

Google Sky Map is one of the must-have apps with a big wow-factor. From Google’s website: “With Google Sky Map for your Android phone you can discover and browse the night sky just by pointing your phone to space. By using your Android phone’s orientation sensors, we can show you a star map for your location. Explore planets, stars, constellations, and more! Learn the name and location of space objects and impress your friends”.

WikiTude World Browser – another excellent augmented reality application for Android. “WikiTude World Browser presents the user with data about their surroundings, nearby landmarks, and other points of interest by overlaying information on the real-time camera view of a smart-phone.”

Celeste Lite will allow you to locate planets simply by aiming your phone’s camera towards the sky, day or night. It will also show various facts, like where the sun will rise or set, or if the moon is full and when it will appear over the horizon. Celeste tracks our solar system with 3D visuals, and is definitely a welcome addition to augmented reality on Android.

Google Goggles lets you take a picture of something that you’re curious about, and it will tell you more about it. For example, take a photo of a famous painting, a landmark or a bottle of wine, and Google Goggles will make a Google search for that object. The software is still under development and it may not work for some things. Perhaps this isn’t an augmented reality or GPS app per se, but I still think it belongs in this category. Is currently only available in the US.

Street View on Google Maps enables the famous Street View feature on Google Maps: watch street-level imagery on your phone. To use it, open Google Maps, search for a place or long-press the map, and tap the Street View option.

WHERE is a location-aware application for Android phones that helps you find and discover the places and people around you. WHERE can even use your location to find coupons to nearby stores. From the developers: “Whether you’re looking for the closest gas station, a local restaurant or a nearby movie theater, the WHERE application on the Android has it. Be sure to check out the WHERE Wall where you can chat with other WHERE users and WHERE Reviews where you can rate and review local restaurants and businesses right from your phone”.

The Coupons App will provide savings at stores, restaurants and gas stations: just show your phone to redeem the coupons. The app comes with a widget, a barcode scanner, a share feature and voice search. It’s a popular coupons application that currently enjoys an avarage rating of 4.68 in the Market, based on nearly 50 000 reviews.

Qype Radar. Just like Google’s Places Directory, Qype helps you find the best places near you, wherever you might be, and the location-based app puts thousands of reviews right in your pocket. Some users report that both WHERE and Places Directory are better applications for this purpose, but Qype can still prove to be a valuable tool.

Urbanspoon is another app that helps you find nearby places of interest, but it’s solely focused on restaurants. You set a simple filter, shake your device and Urbanspoon provides suggestions on where you should dine. Urbanspoon currently is available in the US, Canada, and most major cities in the UK and Australia.

Yelp. From the developers: “Looking for a burrito joint open now? An Irish pub nearby? A gas station you can drive to before your tank hits empty? Yelp for Android is here to help. Use us to search for places to eat, shop, drink, relax and play then read reviews from an active community of locals in the know.”

World Surfer by GeoVector brings more AR to Android. “Using GeoVector’s directional search, you can point your phone at a place that interests you in order to learn more about it or aim your phone down a street to search for things which are in that direction.”

Waze is a “social mobile app that enables drivers to build and use live maps, real-time traffic updates and turn-by-turn navigation for an optimal commute. 100% powered by users, the more you drive the better it gets”. I guess the usefulness of this app depends on where you live and how much community-generated content is available.

Foursquare is a location-based social networking service that has gained in popularity recently. It “gives you and your friends new ways of exploring your city”. You can earn points and unlock badges for discovering new things. If this sounds like your cup of tea, give it a try.

Shazam. I knew of Shazam before I got a chance to try it myself, but I was still quite in awe by how well it worked. For those of you not yet familiar with this application: it lets you identify music tracks and buy them; plus you can learn more about the artist in question, load up their MySpace page and even watch the corresponding music videos on YouTube. In other words: let Shazam listen to a track you hear on the radio and it will not only tell you the name of it, but within a minute you can also watch the video for it and own the track. Pretty high WOW-factor.

TuneWiki will not only function as an excellent music player, but it will also display perfect lyrics for the songs you play – synchronized, karaoke-style. Another application that is quite rad when you’re not used to it.

Spotify. The steady rising Swedish stream-on-demand music service Spotify has an excellent client for Android. However, Spotify is currently only for premium (£9.99/month) members. One of the top features is that you can download songs and play them even when you’re offline. You can now walk around with four million songs in your pocket!

Last.fm is the official Android client for the popular Internet radio site for music. Using a music recommendation system called Audioscrobbler, Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user’s musical taste, and it allows the station to make great recommendations that lets you discover new music.

mSpot lets you load music into the mSpot cloud, and then listen to those tracks from your Android phone or your PC/Mac – anywhere and anytime. It sounds good, and I’m sure this can be a great service for many people, but since streaming apps are real battery drainers, I’ll personally stick with playing songs from my SD card for now. And if I were to use an app that streams music to my device, I would go for one that gives me access to ~4 million songs, like Spotify.

mVideoPlayer is a video player that offers one main advantage over the native Android video app: it supports subtitles. mVideoPlayer also has superior controls for seeking back and forward, among else.

RockPlayer. Some Android phones come with native DivX support, but Android fans have usually been forced to convert videos into a supported format before watching films on their handsets. But now there are actually a few apps in the Market that can play DivX videos. What all these applications have in common, is the use of libraries from the FFmpeg project to decode files. Besides RockPlayer, two fine DivX players are VPlayer and arcMedia. I recommend either RockPlayer or VPlayer, they’re both good.

Act 1 Video Player is one of the most fully-featured video players available for Android. The trial version is free and the full paid version costs 99 cents. A nice alternative to Android’s native video player, although the players listed above can handle DivX as well.

MixZing is one of the most popular and fully-featured music players for Android. I haven’t felt the need to use any other music player than the one that comes with the HTC Hero (besides TuneWiki every now and then, of course), but MixZing is actually quite good. Some of its highlights are:
* Mood Player: play a song and MixZing plays more like it
* Home-screen widgets with album art
* Automatically download missing album art
* Get recommendations for new music
* Get artist info, videos, photos
* Genre and video browsing
* Specify music folders

3 (Cubed) is a pretty awesome open-source music player for Android, with a fresh and appealing 3-D album-art cube interface. My initial reaction to this app was very positive, and I think that impression will last. I suggest you give it a try.

GigBox will help you find events based on your location and your musical taste, and bookmark your favorite events and artists. During live events you can chat, rate and publish pictures directly from your phone.

Recordoid Lite is a great dictaphone for your Android device with a beautiful, retro cassette deck interface that’s easy to use. You can add notes to your recordings, send them via e-mail, save and view recording locations on the map and assign recordings as ringtones. I really dig this app.

Sketcher is an unusual painting app — due to its unusual brushes even complete novices can get interesting results. It’s rather difficult to describe how this app works, but instead of just drawing a single line when you swipe your finger across the screen, the app draws something resembling the pencil strokes of an artist. Here’s my review of Sketcher at Androinica.

JustPictures!. If you’re looking for the best Gallery app replacement the Android Market has to offer, search no further: JustPictures! is it. It’s quick, slick, and besides showing the pictures on your SD card, it lets you browse photos from Picasa, Flickr, Smugmug, Facebook, Photobucket, Windows Live and Tumblr.

PhotoFunia is a silly little app that inserts your face in various scenarios and environments, making it look like you’re in the photo. It has managed to entertain many previously bored Android market commenters. Pretty cool indeed.

Floating Image will make the images on your device float in 3D across the screen, and you can also set Flickr as the source for the picture stream. When you tap on an image, it will be displayed in full screen.This video at YouTube shows what the application looks like.

MagicMarker by Jaytronix is a program for writing and drawing with neon colors on a black background. You can share your artwork via Gmail or save it to the gallery. It’s actually more fun than it sounds.

Camera Illusion “is a camera application that lets you process photos in real-time, previewing and taking amazing pictures with filters, effects and masks”. An app that can be quite fun to play around with. Here’s a little review of Camera Illusion at Phandroid.com.

Vignette is yet another camera app for Android that lets you add interesting and artistic effects to your photos. It’s perhaps the most powerful of the three recommended here, and Vignette has 62 built-in camera and film effects and 20 frame styles. The demo version is fully featured, but it has a 0.05-megapixel limit for your pictures.

Retro Camera almost brings the idea of a stylish interface to the point where it interferes with the usability, but the app is beautiful. The UI changes according to which camera you currently have selected, and there are four of them available – all vintage that provide photos with an analog look. They’re inspired by the Lomo, Holga, Diana , Hipstamatic, as well as Polaroid and toy cameras. Retro Camera is worth using for the UI alone. For more camera software, check out TechCredo’s guide to the top Android camera apps.

Zedge is a client for the Norwegian Zedge.net website, which is a very popular place for cellphone wallpapers, themes and ringtones. I’m almost embarrassed to admit I’ve visited their site from time to time for years, mainly to get themes for my Nokia devices. Their Android app has a slick interface and is actually quite good. My favorite of the wallpaper applications, and it most likely has the largest collection to download from. There are also many high-quality wallpaper collections for Android here at TechCredo.

ShopSavvy allows you to use your phone’s camera to scan barcodes to find the best prices for online and local items. It probably has limited usage outside of the US so far, but it’s still a nice app to have even for non-Americans.

SnapTell. Like ShopSavvy above, SnapTell lets you get information about a product. “Snap a picture of the cover of any book, DVD, CD, or video game and within seconds get links to Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, IMDb, eBay, Barnes & Noble and more. Use this app while shopping in a store to quickly find more information, compare prices, buy the product, or to remember to look at the product later.”

Google Shopper. In February 2010, Google released their own shopping app: Shopper. I like Google’s simple and descriptive approach to naming their services. Shopper very much works like the other shopping tools, and you can make searches by taking pictures of products, scan barcodes or say the name of products out loud. You can also share products with friends and save your history and favorites.

CNET Scan & Shop is said by many to be the shopping application that is able to return results for the greatest number of barcodes. CNET Scan & Shop is “presented by Sony”, and is very similar in its layout to ShopSavvy. Which one of these three is the best shopping application for Android? I can’t say for sure, but they’re all good. Perhaps you prefer the simplicity of the Barcode Scanner, or got a sixth option?

Grocery iQ is an app for managing and creating shopping lists. You can swiftly build new shopping lists by saying the item name, scanning the barcode, or using predictive search. The app also lets you sync & share your shopping lists with other Grocery iQ users. The New York Times apparently named Grocery iQ “the best of several grocery-list apps”.

eBay. The official eBay app for Android. From the developers: “With the eBay application for Android, you can search, buy, pay, and check status of your eBay activity no matter where you are. The app will alert you about your auctions, so you never miss the opportunity to get that hard-to-find item! The app also features convenient voice-enabled search, status updates for sellers, and the ability to leave feedback.” It’s only available in selected countries as of now.

PayPal is the official PayPal app for Android, with features such as bump money transfer, withdrawing funds from your PayPal balance, requesting money, split the bill (instantly split the bill, calculate tip, and request everyone’s share) and rent and bill reminders. If you use PayPal a lot, this app may indeed come in handy, but it takes up around 2.5MB of precious internal storage and it can’t be moved to the SD for security reasons.

Dropbox offers you storage space in the cloud, and consequently gives you access to your files regardless of which platform you’re currently working on. This is the official Dropbox app for Android, and it lets you view all your Dropbox contents. You can even stream music and movies in your Dropbox straight to your phone, and upload photos from your device and email its public link to a friend in no time. Check out the video for more info about the mechanics of Dropbox.

Cooking Capsules is a clever recipe application with full cooking instructions in three steps: watch a video tutorial, shop ingredients and cook the meal. However, the number of recipes is currently limited and a larger collection would certainly increase the application’s usefulness. Do you know of more good cooking software for Android? Leave a comment and I’ll check it out.

AK Notepad. I was surprised when I found out that Android does not have a native application for taking notes. I had hoped there would be a Notes app that would sync with Google Notebook (I later realized Google had stopped developing Notebook altogether in favour of Google Docs). There are however software on the Market that handle notes very well, and AK Notepad is one of the better among them, with lots of features and settings

Catch Notes by Catch (who also develops AK Notepad) is even better than its sibling above. If I’d have to choose one application for taking notes on Android, this one would be it. Catch Notes was formerly known as 3banana, and the company Catch was previously called Snaptic.

Evernote. Yep, you guessed it: yet another notes application. This one stores your notes online and you can access them from your browser as well. If you’re unsure which one of these apps to go for, I’d suggest 3banana.

Springpad. I guess yet another notes app is the last thing this guide needs, but I couldn’t resist adding Springpad, which seems to be taking a slightly different approach to the task than its competitors. For me personally, to be able to sync my content with an online account that I can easily access from my desktop computer is a requirement, and Springpad does that commendably. It lets you save notes, tasks or lists, scan product barcodes, take photos and geolocate nearby businesses. I haven’t used the app enough yet to decide whether or not I like it more than 3banana, but I think Springpad at least is worth giving a try.

Astrid is an esteemed and very popular to-do list manager. From the developers: “Astrid is a todo list / task tracking system for Google’s Android platform that is built with your productivity in mind. Astrid’s goal is not to be the most feature-complete task organizer, but to be the most simple solution that helps you stay productive.”

Shelves is designed to help you manage your various collections straight from your Android phone, such as movies, video games, books, gadgets and albums. The app can handle 9 different collections, has live folder support, can import info from Delicious Library and scan barcodes (requires the app Barcode Scanner). Here’s my review of Shelves at Androinica.

FlashLight from flash-the-brain.com will allow you to use the screen of your phone as a flashlight. May come in handy if you don’t have an Android device by HTC, and thus lack the preloaded flashlight app that takes advantage of the LED.

Currency is an excellent application for converting currencys. Since it connects to the Internet, you will always get the current rates. One of the many wonderful Android apps that keeps it simple and just work the way they should.

Finance Apps / Expense Trackers. A while I go I was in the need of an application that could track my expenses. I wanted a way to quickly see how much was left on one of my accounts, and get an overview of what I spend my money on. I ended up using Money Manager, and it’s great for that purpose. It might be a bit too basic, but that’s also a strength and I love the homescreen widget showing my account balance. Other popular finance apps are DailyCash and EasyMoney.

Countdown Alarm and Ultimate Stopwatch & Timer. I wasn’t impressed with the native timer application on my HTC Hero, and these two apps were the best replacements I could find. They are both very basic, but do the trick.

Gmote. From the developer’s website: “Gmote turns Android into a remote control for a computer, allowing users to run movies and music at a distance. It supports all of the standard remote control features such as play, pause, rewind, volume controls etc. It also has a built-in file browser that lets you select what to play.”

aCar. I am a big city commuter myself and I haven’t owned a car in 10 years (right after I got my driver’s license), but for those who drive a lot, this app will probably be useful. It helps you track the maintenance, fuel mileage and expenses of your car, and can provide you with statistics, charts and reports.

LauncherPro. Even though the HTC Sense launcher is great, I eventually grew tired of it and started looking for something more advanced and customizable. In mid May 2010, I discovered the then new LauncherPro and I’m still using it. LauncherPro is without doubt one of the top two homescreen replacements for Android – it’s very powerful and versatile: my favorite app. Check out the video link below to see what it looks like, although a vast number of improvements and new features have been added to the launcher since the review. There is a Plus version as well with built-in widgets (People, Bookmarks, Calendar, Twitter, Facebook, Friends, etc) that resemble the HTC widgets, and it also has additional features such as widget resizing. Here’s TechCredo’s LauncherPro tutorial – everything you need to know.

ADW.Launcher is a at the time of writing brand new open-source home replacement app. ADW is similar to the launcher on Android 2.2 Froyo, only with lots of options and more flexibility. It features homescreen previews (like HTC Sense) and a customizable application drawer (with a Samsung Galaxy S option). What I like most about the app, though, is its ability to hide icon labels (it makes the screen look less cluttered) and the configurable drag & drop action buttons. You can also flick up the dock bar to unveil another bar where you can place six shortcuts to folders and apps. Very convenient! All in all, ADW.Launcher is a splendid app.

AppBrain App Market. The site AppBrain.com is hands down the best way to discover, browse and install apps in the Android Market. The mobile client for the site is an application that every person rocking an Android device ought to have, and it lets you install/uninstall Android apps from the web interface AppBrain.com provides. It’s very convenient, and the service brings key features the default Market’s missing. Many Android blogs (such as Androinica, where I’m also an editor) use AppBrain’s install links as well, so app’s can be installed directly from a post. Watch and learn, Google.

AppAware “shares online your installations, updates and removals of Android applications. In this way you become aware (App-Aware) of what other users are installing on their Android phones right now and/or around you!”. This utility can be a good way to discover new applications.

Gesture Search from Google itself “lets you quickly find a contact, a bookmark, an application, or a music track on your device by drawing on the screen. Search results are updated as you add each letter or digit and becomes better by learning from your search history.” Pretty neat.

Apps 2 SD. If you got Android 2.2 or above running on your phone, you enjoy official support for installing apps to the SD card. This app helps you move applications to an external storage and makes the process much easier. A similar app is SDMove, but Apps 2 SD is better in my opinion. To enable even more apps to be moved to the SD, check out TechCredo’s tutorial on the topic.

Astro File Manager allows you to manage files on your phone without the need for a computer. Perhaps most useful for people with rooted devices, but still a valuable tool – especially since Android doesn’t come with a file manager.

AndroZip File Manager. For a long time, I was content with using Astro and I never looked elsewhere for my file managing needs. But there are plenty of other fish in the sea, and AndroZip is a strong challenger. Besides basic file management, it can also compress/uncompress ZIP and RAR archives, and it may also serve as an app manager.

EStrongs File Explorer is one of my favorite Android file managers. One of the application’s main benefits is that it can browse local area networks (LAN) and FTP servers in addition to your phone storage.

Task Manager. There’s generally no way to close applications manually on Android: the system handles it for you. That took some getting used to for me, coming from Symbian and Windows Mobile. Generally I trust Android to make task decisions for me, and you should too (a lot has been written on the subject). But if you want to kill off processes yourself, then Task Manager is an excellent choice.

EStrongs Task Manager. There are plenty of good Android task managers out there that do what they’re supposed to, and selecting which one to use is mainly a matter of preference. This is a popular and acclaimed choice on the Market.

ROM Manager is a must-have app for Android users with rooted devices. It lets you manage ROMs via a simple interface, perform and restore backups and boot into recovery mode. ROM Manager even lets you install your favorite ROMs over the air. If you have root access, ROM Manager belongs in your app drawer.

Dialer One is a replacement for the stock Android dialer, and it has proved to be very popular. The app has intuitive T9 support, speed dial, is customizable and allows you to swipe between screens. I personally prefer the Sense dialer that is on my HTC Desire, but I can see why people like it, and it’s probably an improvement for those running vanilla Android.

SayMyName Dessert. Besides saying the name of a caller out loud, as well as the name of the person who just sent you an email or an SMS, this app can automatically read entire text messages and the subject of emails. Pretty cool. For more information, you can check out my SayMyName review at Androinica.

HistoryEraser. Each time you search for an app in the Android Market on your phone, that specific search is saved, and it will show up the next time you make a Market search. If you want to delete the Market search history, as well as other saved history, you can use this tool.

Any Cut allows you to make a shortcut on your homescreen to pretty much anything. I couldn’t find an official homepage for this utility, but just search the Market and you’ll find it. There’s a more advanced commercial version available as well called Better Cut. The most powerful way to create advanced homescreen shortcuts, however, is with the homescreen replacement LauncherPro.

Live Bookmarks is a simple tool that displays a list of your bookmarks in the sort order of your choice, so you can access them directly from your homescreen. Quite convenient, but the app is unfortunately a bit slow.

Bookmark Backup & Restore. The native Android browser lets you sort your bookmarks by date, by how frequently they are used, and by their initial letter. However, on my HTC Desire, the Mostly used option isn’t saved from session to session (bug), and in any case, there’s no way to manually sort your bookmarks in the exact order you want them. This handy little app fills that gap. It also lets you make a backup of your bookmarks, which is great when you often flash new ROMs.

Album Art Grabber Free. Music apps that play MP3 files on your memory card look much better and are more fun to use when the cover art is available for each track in your collection. Do most of your albums lack covers? No problem, this app downloads them for you automatically. Check TechCredo’s Android FAQ for more info on the subject.

Disk Usage. This clean and clever little app helps you find apps, files and folders on your memory card or internal storage which take up a lot of space. It shows a diagram, and the app has multitouch support.

Quick Settings is an open-source app by Sergey Shafarenka that allows you to quickly access the most common settings (Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, Silent Mode etc) from one single screen. It’s fast, and the app can be accessed directly from the notification bar or via a longpress on the Search key. A great app to have.

MySettings is the same type of app as Quick Settings, since it gives you quick access to the most common phone options from one single screen. What I like most about the app is its large, stylish buttons. It’s quick, too.

aTrackDog keeps track of all your installed applications and tells you which of them can be updated to a newer version. This application now has limited usage, since the Market has the same feature (under My downloads), but I still think aTrackDog deserves to be on this list. A nice feature of the aTrackdog website is that you can browse the top 100 most popular applications in various categories.

3G Watchdog is great for people that don’t have an unlimited data plan, since the app monitors your mobile internet (3G/Edge/GPRS) traffic usage, and shows a status icon in the notification bar and a detailed report page.

FlyScreen is by many considered to be an essential application: the first they install on a new device and the first they recommend. FlyScreen basically puts your favorite web services on your phone’s sleep screen, for quick and easy access to the content you use most often. I don’t have it installed actually, mainly because I can get most of what it offers simply by going to my regular homescreen. But I can see how FlyScreen can be very useful for some people.

WaveSecure is a security tool that first gained recognition on Symbian devices. It enables users to remotely lock down and track down lost phones, get a copy of their data securely backed up, and remotely wipe data of the phone to protect user privacy. If you download the application from the Market before the 31 January 2010, you’ll get a free lifetime subscription. It feels safe to have WaveSecure installed, just in case.

Titanium Backup is the backup tool of choice for Android users with root access. It can backup, restore and freeze your apps, including the app’s data and Market links. There’s a donate version as well with additional features.

Nice list. Its amazing to have such wonderful and absolute list of android apps to help manage the work in a much better way. One more inclusion from my end will be Replicon’s android version task management tools ( http://www.replicon.com/olp/task-management-software.aspx ) that is cloud based managing the task to be done up ultimately raising the productivity to become more precise and perfect.

It’s all too easy to turn off the TV and forget people in need. I am unable to turn a blind eye to the plights of the stricken, however. So many Japanese children are left without their parents, and so many parents left without means to support their families anymore. They need support from the rest of the world. Not all of us are fortunate enough to be able to spare the money to donate, but any contribution that you could make would be appreciated! If you can’t donate, please keep Japan in your thoughts and pass the word around!

That’s quite a list! Thanks for the recommendations, I’ll check out these apps.

http://www.netify.me FM

Nice list! One app that I think should be up there too is netMemo.

It’s a very slick little thing that makes it easy to record short voice messages and have them delivered by e-mail to your inbox. Great when you think of important stuff on-the-road and don’t have time to write it down!

You’re absolutely right, sorry about that. According to Google Translate, it says “a wonderful job, very good, for me it was a achado.” :)

Chris

Lots of usefull apps here for anyone new to the Android Market. I had problems with Springpad where I couldn’t get a reliable and constant sync over a week. I liked Springpad, but using Catch now. Can’t wait for Note Everything has an online solution apart from gdocs.